Apoc Series (Vol. 2): Silence of the Apoc [Tales From The Zombie Apocalypse]

by Wilsey, Martin (Editor)

  He starts to reach for the door’s lock and then stops. If there’s any number of them out there, he’ll be totally fucked. They’ll have no trouble forcing their way inside with only him to hold the door, even with the gun. Instead, he takes a breath, raises the butt of the gun to shoulder level, and taps it against the door.

  For just a moment there is nothing but quiet from the other side; then, all at once, a barrage of thuds and bangs begin to actually rattle the door.

  “Fuck!” Bill swears, jumping back at the sight of the shuddering door. He backs away and wonders if there’s any other way out of the building. Burke had mentioned blocking off the glass front doors that open into the small front office of the building with his truck. But Bill had searched both Burke and the Deputy’s desk and found no truck key, so simply hopping into the dead man’s ride and hauling ass out of town wasn’t really an option either.

  If only, Bill thinks as he goes to the double doors that separate the two halves of the building. Each door has a small safety-glass widow that allows him to peer through and into the other room.

  He can see the front doors, and the truck just on the other side of them, but he can also see beyond the truck—to what looks like a small horde of zombies. Once more the idea of simply walking out of the building seems out of the question. So, with a sigh, Bill sets out to do something he’d always wanted to do but never got to: explore the Sheriff’s office.

  ***

  There isn’t much to it.

  There is a small evidence room, though in a small town like Redfield, Missouri, there isn’t much crime—and that means there isn’t much evidence of a crime. There are male/female restrooms, practically identical except for the urinals. There is a small lounge/break room, which connects to a kitchenette. And, lastly, there is a small supply closet, which mostly holds the standard office supplies: pens, pencils, paper, et cetera. Bill is about to leave said closet when, by a trick of the pocket-flashlight that he found in the evidence room, he notices that up in one corner was a trapdoor marked ROOF ACCESS. He feels a jolt of excitement at the idea of a potential small victory, and lays the shotgun across one of the empty supply shelves while he steps up onto a spare office chair and lifts the ceiling panel out of place. When he shines the light up into the hole, he sees a hatch leading up to the office’s roof.

  “Hot damn, I’m free at last!” Bill says, as he studies his surroundings. Soon he sees, as he’d suspected he might, a ladder built into the wall, hidden behind one of the shelves and positioned right under the hole. Quickly he hops down from the chair, shoves it aside, and goes to moving the shelf out away from the wall.

  At first, it’s quite heavy, and Bill wonders if maybe it’s bolted in place. Then he realizes the damn thing is simply being weighed down by dozens of reams of paper, as well as other supplies—and the shotgun. So he sets the gun aside, then starts pulling the reams and other supplies down—simply tossing them aside—until the shelf is almost bare. When he thinks he’s lightened the load considerably, he gives it another try, and this time the shelf moves. He pivots it on one edge until he’s made a space where he can get to the ladder, then holds the button-end of the flashlight between his teeth, picks up the shotgun, and climbs up the ladder.

  ***

  Jim sits next to the covered attic window, clinging to a blood-smeared flashlight—the Sheriff’s flashlight, the long, heavy, metal kind—and occasionally lifting the corner of the window’s curtain just enough to peek out and make sure the dead are still up and walking around. In the last two weeks, he’s seen them nab countless would-be survivors (fewer and fewer as the days go on), probably a dozen dogs, and even a squirrel that ventured out after a fallen acorn from the big tree just outside the Sheriff’s house. Maybe worse than that was watching a half-eaten dog come back to “life” and begin dragging itself—entrails and all—around the Sheriff’s yard.

  Inside the Sheriff’s house, the things had managed to pull a Trojan horse of sorts. An elderly man that the Sheriff had taken in—along with numerous others—had suffered a coronary, and just minutes later had come back and attacked the person nearest him; his eleven-year-old granddaughter. Sheriff Patrick—ever the stalwart heroine—had tried to pull him off the girl; tried to subdue him non-lethally, but in the end had had to put a bullet from her .44 revolver right between his eyes. Everyone who wasn’t already screaming hysterically had screamed then, and the girl lay sobbing next to her granddad.

  Over the day and a half after the incident, the girl, Gloria, had gotten sicker and sicker; she was sweating like crazy, and someone had said to keep her hydrated—which made sense. Sheriff Patrick had assured and reassured the others that help was coming, and just to “hold tight.” Then, nearly thirty hours after being attacked by her granddad, someone had tried to give the girl a drink of water, but when they brought the glass to her lips, she recoiled, refusing to drink. One of the others had mentioned some bullshit about rabies; a third person had pointed out that rabies doesn’t turn people into flesh-eating freaks. But Jim had watched as even in a weakened state the girl fought like her life depended on it.

  Eventually, they’d managed to get a little of the water into her mouth, but not before she bit a few fingers, eliciting more than a few swear words from otherwise seemingly kind and caring folk. And she still ended up vomiting afterward, despite the fact she hadn’t eaten anything since she’d been there. In fact, there hadn’t been much food to go around, and it was gone after just a few days. Once the Sheriff had taken Jim and the other men aside and suggested that they all—her included—venture out in search of “supplies.” Jim hadn’t really been keen on the idea, but it was the other men who steadfastly refused to set foot outside the Sheriff’s walls—and supposed safety. She’d then turned her eye to Jim—just Jim—and asked if he was willing to try. He’d shrugged and simply asked if she really thought they’d make it past the yard. She didn’t.

  The morning after the finger-biting incident everyone in the house was awakened by a man’s screams.

  Harold, a middle-aged man Jim knew from coming into the gas station where Jim worked as a clerk, was supposed to be taking a turn watching Gloria. Whether he had been awake or asleep Jim still doesn’t know; all he knows is that Gloria finished the job she’d started the day before, and when the others came running to see what the screaming was about Harold was kneeling next to Gloria’s supine body and clutching his hand to his chest. Blood stained the floor at his knees, and it was immediately evident who it belonged to. Gloria’s head had been crushed in by a nearby lamp whose base was made of heavy wood, and it was clear that she hadn’t done it to herself. Sheriff Patrick didn’t hesitate in pulling her revolver once more and aiming dead-center between Harold’s eyes.

  He’d pleaded with her, swearing that the girl had turned, and when some of the others—not all—voiced their disbelief, he held up a trembling right hand lacking in digits. Luckily for him, that had made the Sheriff holster her weapon. Then she’d wrapped Gloria’s body in a sheet and moved it down to the basement—where before she and one of the other men had stored the girl’s granddad’s body.

  After that Harold had begun to act just as the girl had, getting weaker by the hour and sweating like he was in a sauna. And just like with Gloria they tried their best to keep him hydrated until eventually, he cringed away from even the sight of a glass of water. And while most of the people in the Sheriff’s house were quite willing to tend to a cute, eleven-year-old girl in pigtails, none seemed overly interested in going very far out of their way to look after a crotchety, forty-something man who seemed to do nothing but whine about every little ache and discomfort.

  It was about ten days into their forced lockdown when a much longed-for silence settled over the house. For days Harold had constantly been moaning and groaning, tossing and writhing on the couch in the Sheriff’s den and coddling his bandaged hand. Just like the girl, everyone had been taking shifts watching over him, doing their best to get a little bit of liq
uid into him and more often than not just giving up when he resisted. And on the night that he finally quieted there was almost a collective sigh. Jim can’t recall how much time actually passed, but remembers thinking Not again! when there was a blood-curdling scream—this time from the woman who was watching Harold—followed by a ruckus from the Sheriff’s den. Jim arrived on the scene, followed by the Sheriff and an older woman named Esther. What they saw from the double-wide doorway of the den was Harold—kneeling over the presumably dead body of one of the others—and scooping up handfuls of intestine from a raggedly torn-open abdominal cavity. The woman who had been watching Harold—Rachel something—was laid out on the couch where Harold had been sleeping, a deep, seeping gash torn into her neck with a tattered flap of skin hanging from it.

  Jim heard Esther scream from right over his shoulder; or rather he heard part of a scream, quickly cut off by the sound of violent regurgitation. The Sheriff swore hoarsely before pulling her gun and taking dead aim at Harold. She did call his name two or three times, giving him every chance to acknowledge her and to stop eating Charlie Reynolds. But Harold was seemingly oblivious to anyone else in the room, be it Jim, Esther, or Sheriff Patrick.

  He watched in awe as the shot rang out and Harold’s head popped like a balloon at a carnival dart game, splattering the wall behind him as well as one arm of the couch with blood and brain matter.

  ***

  After the massacre in the Sheriff’s den, they hadn’t had much time to gather themselves. There were three more dead bodies in all, including Harold, and it was while Jim and the Sheriff were moving body number two—Charlie Reynolds—that the other woman had gotten up, just like the rest, and gone after Esther. When Jim reached the top of the basement steps right behind the Sheriff, he watched as Esther bolted through the foyer and out the front door. The Sheriff had called after her to stop, but the woman was frantic, and well beyond reason. Jim did see that she didn’t get far, as she was met at the front gate by a number of zombies that took her down with utmost ease.

  Didn’t even make it past the yard, Jim had thought.

  And when the Sheriff had tried to make for the door after her—to shut it—the Rachel something-zombie that had chased the old woman out had turned on her with catlike reflexes.

  “DOWN!” the Sheriff had said, prompting Jim to get back to the basement. But when he started to descend the steps, there was Charlie Reynolds, struggling up toward him. And if it hadn’t been for Charlie’s lack of core strength, he probably would’ve managed.

  Jim raced back up the steps and slammed the door shut behind him, bracing himself against it just in case. He saw Sheriff Patrick put a bullet into the dead woman’s face at point-blank range, leaving mostly just a gaping hole with a hairline. When she turned back to Jim, he just shook his head.

  “Upstairs!” the Sheriff had said with a grunt, leading the way with her gun still drawn. Jim had briefly considered closing the front door as he followed the Sheriff up the steps, but a backward glance showed that the dead were on the Sheriff’s doorstep.

  Now it is just the two of them; trapped in the attic of her house with no end to the plague of the undead in sight.

  Jim lifts the corner of the curtain and glances lazily down at the street, quickly skimming over the remains of Esther, and then he briefly searches the starlit line of the small town’s horizon. From several blocks away, something catches his eye.

  Bill moves along at a crawl, crouching and kneeling as much as he can as he traverses the rooftops of Redfield. Some gaps are bigger than others, and he figures it’s only a matter of time before he makes a misstep and falls to asphalt or concrete, likely breaking one if not both legs, and becoming meat for the beasts. But he knows that if he can just make it to his place on the southern edge of town he can get the hell out of Dodge. His truck—just like Deputy Burke’s—is a four-wheel-drive, and it has no problem handling the rural landscape that surrounds the town. When he comes to the edge of the roof of the gas station where he works as a mechanic, he quietly maneuvers around to the south side of the building, where a tall maple tree stands, offering at least partial cover and a less disastrous way to the ground than falling. The only real problem is the few dozen zombies that walk the street on that side of the building.

  Staying low, he studies them, trying to discern any kind of pattern to their movement. There is none.

  While he watches the grotesque, nightmare versions of his former friends and neighbors, noting a number of them that he once knew socially, a slight breeze kicks up, cooling his skin nicely. But the relief only lasts a moment, because it doesn’t take long for Bill to realize that he is upwind of the creatures. Momentarily they all seem to turn his way, dead eyes searching the relative darkness until they seem to find the one thing out of place: him.

  “Fuck me…” he whispers.

  As if in response, one of them lets out a strangled, guttural cry and quickly moves toward him. Bill starts to panic, starts to flee, but there is nowhere left to go. He jogs around the edge of the roof, searching for a clear spot on the ground to drop down, but there seem to be zombies pretty much on all sides. He thinks to himself that it would’ve been nice if the station had had a roof access hatch, and scoffs. Going back to the south edge he sees that, although the zombies can get around pretty well on relatively flat land, they seem somewhat incapable of climbing the tree up to him.

  Small fucking favors, he thinks.

  Then he hears something; something even more distressing than a few dozen flesh-hungry maniacs: a few hundred flesh-hungry maniacs.

  He sees that even more zombies seem to be pouring onto the scene, and he isn’t sure where they’re coming from. He’d only seen so many just moments ago, but now they are swarming to the gas station from every street corner and every shadow in sight.

  “You have got to be fucking KIDDING me!”

  Bill shoulders the butt of the shotgun and takes aim down at the nearest of the zombies—the screamer—and lightly fingers the trigger. He wants to squeeze—if only for the catharsis—but figures it’s probably best to save each shot for when it really counts. With a sigh of exasperation, he lowers the gun, searching the surrounding darkness for any means of exodus and only finding a sea of death and ravenous monsters.

  “Out of the frying pan…” he says quietly.

  Then, by happenstance, he catches a glimpse in the periphery of his vision. At first, he thinks he imagined it, then, as he searches the distance for any telltale vestige of what he thought he saw, it happens again.

  “Holy shit…”

  From across town—to the south-west—there is a flash of light, signaling him from an attic window. He squints into the darkness and realizes that it is coming from the Sheriff’s house. Instinctively he waves his arms through the air, not sure if she—or whoever—can really see him.

  ***

  “He sees me!” Jim says excitedly. “He really sees me. I can’t believe he’s still alive.”

  “Don’t celebrate too soon, James. He’s way over there, and we’re stuck in here,” says Sheriff Patrick.

  Jim looks down at the yard, down at the street, and sees that after the monstrous, animal scream that pierced the night, the herd seems to be thinning.

  “Maybe not, Sheriff—look.”

  She goes over to the window where he sits and peeks out from the opposite corner of the curtain. Indeed the dead do seem to be departing, heading almost excitedly toward the center of town, toward James’ friend William. She hasn’t the heart to point this out to him.

  “Come on,” he says. “I think we can get out of here and get to him. Then the three of us can get out of this—”

  “Hold on, James. Slow down. I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  He stops and looks at her hand on his arm, then pulls away.

  “What are you talking about? We have to go get him.”

  “James…” She hesitates. “Why do you think they’re leaving?”

  He does
n’t answer, and looks down dejectedly.

  “You’ve seen how fast they are—how dangerous.” She places a hand on his arm again, this time for comfort. He looks up at her sorrowfully.

  “No,” he says, shaking his head. He pulls away from her again. “I came to you and begged you to let him out of jail when this started.”

  He backs away, and Sheriff Patrick takes a step toward him.

  “And even if we hadn’t gotten stuck in here you wouldn’t have. Would you?”

  She sighs. She knows he’s right. Then again, it isn’t as if she knew that everything would go to utter shit with no end in sight. Who knew the dead would rise with an insatiable appetite for destruction?

  “Maybe leaving him locked up was what kept him alive, James.”

  Jim looks at the older woman warily and thinks, I hate it when she’s right.

  “I’m going to get my friend,” he says. “See you around, Sheriff.” With that, he starts toward the attic’s hatch, flashlight in hand.

  Sheriff Patrick sighs, unholstering her .44 and following after him.

  “Hold on,” she says, moving past him to the hatch. “I’ll go down first.”

  Jim watches as she lets the small door fall open, and, as quietly as she can, she lowers the ladder. There is no sound coming from the second floor of the house so far as he can tell, and as Patrick cautiously descends the steps, she doesn’t seem to react to anything. After a moment, Jim moves up to the opening and peers down. The Sheriff is nowhere in sight, and for just a moment Jim wonders if maybe she hadn’t had time to react before being attacked by one of them. Then she pops back into view and motions for him to come down—quietly.